Anyone who's ever wanted to share a neat Web page with someone else knows the drill: cut-and-paste the link and send it via e-mail or instant message (IM) to whomever you want to see it.

Slingpage, which becomes available as a public beta on Monday, has a different idea.

"Sharing a Web site by sending a link is not necessarily real-time and it's not interactive," Peter Weinberg, CEO and founder of Slingpage, told InternetNews.com. "With Slingpage we're moving Web surfing from a solo experience to more of a social browsing experience. You shouldn't be limited to social networks to socialize."

Slingpage is a browser extension that works with Internet Explorer (the company says its working on both Firefox and Mac support. Currently, Slingpage runs on Windows XP and Vista). Once installed, users can "sling" Web pages to one another with one mouse click or share their "slingcast" collections at the Slingpage Web site.

In an online demo, Weinberg showed how Slingpage works. A list of contacts or friends resides on the screen. Clicking on any of them sends an invite to view the Web page you're looking at. With one click acceptance, the recipient or recipients can see the same page you see. Also a sticky note feature lets you add comments about the page, like, "Here's the YouTube video I told you about," or "Here's the agenda for that conference next week. Going?"

From there, users can chat on what's been sent.

While many consumers and professionals share Web site links on a casual, infrequent basis, there's also a solid core (12 percent in the U.S.) of what Forrester Research calls "Collectors". These people use online bookmarks and other services like RSS feeds, Tags and Votes on community sites to promote or share Web pages they find interesting. Collectors "could likely be the right audience for Slingpage," said Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang.

Forrester's North American Social Technographics Online Survey, in the second quarter of 2007, covered 10,010 respondents. In the 18-24 age range (often college) the rate nearly doubles from 12 to 23 percent.

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Weinberg said Slingpage has patents related to its Web site sharing technology. After launching an early test alpha phase version in January, the service has been available to a group of about a thousand private beta testers. Starting Monday, the beta version will be available free to anyone.

Catch the latest HotSling

Slingcasts, which Weinberg describes as a kind of micro-blog, can be sent to groups of friends and contacts who can also subscribe to get the latest additions. "HotSlings" are featured at the Slingpage home page.

Much like the most popular YouTube videos at the popular video portal's home page, HotSlings are the most popular Web pages being passed around Slingpage's network.

Bloggers might also use Slingcasts to simply send a quick note on something they've seen on the Web, sending the Web page along as well. The advantage is quick distribution for interesting items that may not merit a fuller blog post.

You can also Sling someone a Web page if they're offline for them to see when reconnected.

The company is also working on a recommendation engine similar to what Amazon does with books and other products. The idea is that users will see a "Slingcasts you might like" option based on what they've already viewed or shared.

Weinberg thinks Slingpage has created a new category of applications it calls instant Web-sharing. "There are social networking sites and social browsers like Flock and StumbleUpon and social bookmarking like delicious and Digg," he said. "But none of them do the one-click Web sharing and auto-tagging we offer."

While he calls the beta release "stable," Weinberg said the company is working on new features, refinements and partnerships. "It's early, we have plenty of work to do."